of the Romans asserted itself in the face of these crushing 542, 543. misfortunes. In 212 Syracuse was recovered; in 211 Capua fell after a long siege which Hannibal failed to raise, even by his famous march up to the gates of Rome, and in the same year a coalition was formed in Greece against Philip V. of Macedon, which effectually paralysed his offensive action. Hannibal was now confined to Lucania and Bruttium and his brother Hasdrubal, marching from Spain to join him, 547. 548. 543-48. was defeated and slain on the river Metaurus (207). The war in Italy was now virtually ended, for, though during four years more Hannibal stood at bay in a corner of Bruttium, he was powerless to prevent the restoration of Roman authority throughout the peninsula. Sicily was once more secure; and finally in 206, the year after the victory on the Metaurus, the successes of the young P. Scipio in Spain (211-6) were crowned by the complete expulsion of the Carthaginians from the peninsula. On his return from Spain Scipio eagerly urged an immediate invasion 549. 550. 551. of Africa. The senate hesitated; but Scipio gained the day. He was elected consul for 205, and given the province of Sicily, with permission to cross into Africa if he thought fit. Voluntary contributions of men, money, and supplies poured in to the support of the popular hero; and by the end of 205 Scipio had collected in Sicily a sufficient force for his purpose. In 204 he crossed to Africa, where he was welcomed by the Numidian prince Massinissa, whose friendship he had made in Spain. In 203 he twice defeated the Carthaginian forces, and a large party at Carthage were anxious to accept his offer of negotiations. But the advocates of resistance triumphed.
Hannibal was recalled from Italy, and returned to fight his last battle against Rome at Zama, where Scipio, who had 552. been continued in command as proconsul for 202 by a special vote of the people, won a complete victory. The war was over. The Roman assembly voted that the Carthaginian request for peace should be granted, and entrusted the settlement of the terms to Scipio and a commission often senators. Carthage was allowed to retain her territory in Africa; but she undertook to wage no wars outside Africa, and none inside without the consent of Rome. She surrendered all her ships but ten triremes, her elephants, and all prisoners of war, and agreed to pay an indemnity of 10,000 talents in fifty years. The Numidian Massinissa (q.v.) was rewarded by an increase of territory, and was enrolled among the “allies and friends” of the Roman people.
The battle of Zama decided the fate of the West. The power of Carthage was broken and her supremacy passed to Rome. The West under Roman rule. 631. Henceforth Rome had no rival to fear westward of Italy, and it rested with herself to settle within what limits her supremacy should be confined and what form it should take. For the next fifty years, however, Rome was too deeply involved in the affairs of the East to think of extending her rule far beyond the limits of the rich inheritance which had fallen to her by the defeat of Carthage; but within this area considerable advance was made in the organization and consolidation of her rule. In Sicily and Spain, the immediate establishment of a Roman Sicily and Spain. 553. 548-57. government was imperatively necessary, if these possessions were not either to fall a prey to internal anarchy, or be recovered for Carthage by some second Hamilcar. Accordingly, we find that in Sicily the former dominions of Hiero were at once united with the western half of the island as a single province,[1] and that in Spain, after nine years of a provisional government (206-197), two provinces were in 197[2] definitely established, and each, like Sicily, assigned to one of the praetors for the year, two additional praetors being elected for the purpose. But here the resemblance between the two cases 553. 618. ends. From 201 down to the outbreak of the Slave War in 136 there was unbroken peace in Sicily, and its part in the history is limited to its important functions in supplying Rome with corn and in provisioning and clothing the Roman legions.[3] It became every year a more integral part of Italy; and a large proportion even of the land itself passed gradually into the hands of enterprising Roman speculators. The governors of the two Spains had very different work to do from that which fell to the lot of the Sicilian praetors. The condition of Spain required that year after year the praetors should be armed with the consular authority, and backed by a standing force of four legions, while more than once the presence of the consuls themselves was found necessary. Still, in spite of all difficulties, the work of pacification proceeded. To M. Porcius Cato, the censor, and 559. 574-75. 605. 621. to Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (praetor and propraetor, 180-79), father of the two tribunes, is mainly due the credit of quieting the Celtiberian tribes of central Spain, and the government of Gracchus was followed by thirty years of comparative tranquillity. The insurrection headed by Viriathus in 149 was largely caused by exactions of the Roman magistrates themselves, while its obstinate continuance down to the capture of Numantia, in 133, was almost as much the result of the incapacity of the Roman commanders.[4] But the re-settlement of the country by Scipio Africanus the younger in that year left all Spain, with the exception of the highland Astures and Cantabri in the north-west, finally and tranquilly subject to Rome. Roman traders and speculators flocked to the seaport towns and spread inland. The mines became centres of Roman industry; the Roman legionaries quartered in Spain year after year married Spanish wives, and when their service was over gladly settled down in Spain in preference to returning to Italy. The first Roman communities established outside Italy were both planted in Spain, and both owed their existence to the Roman legions.[5]
In Africa there was no question at first of the introduction of Roman government by the formation of a province (see Africa—Third Punic War, 153-46 = 605-8. 559, 571. Africa, Roman). Carthage, bound hand and foot by the treaty of 201, was placed under the jealous watch of the loyal prince of Numidia, who himself willingly acknowledged the suzerainty of Rome. But it was impossible for this arrangement to be permanent. Every symptom of reviving prosperity at Carthage was regarded at Rome with feverish anxiety, and neither the expulsion of Hannibal in 195 nor his death in 183 did much to check the growing conviction that Rome would never be secure while her rival existed. It was therefore with grim satisfaction that many in the Roman senate watched the increasing irritation of the Carthaginians under the harassing raids and encroachments of their favoured neighbour Massinissa, and waited for the moment when Carthage should, by some breach of the conditions imposed upon her, supply 603. 607. Rome with a pretext for interference. At last in 151 came the news that Carthage, in defiance of treaty obligations, was actually at war with Massinissa. The anti-Carthaginan party in the senate, headed by M. Porcius Cato, eagerly seized the opportunity, and war was declared, and nothing short of the destruction of their city itself was demanded from the despairing Carthaginians. The demand was refused, and in 149 the siege of Carthage begun. During the next two years little progress was made, but in 147 P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, grandson by adoption of the conqueror of Hannibal, was, at the age of thirty-seven, and though
- ↑ Livy xxvi. 40. The union was apparently effected in 210.
- ↑ Ibid. xxxii. 27; cf. Marquardt, Staatsverw. i. 252, and Hübner in Hermes, i. 105 seq.
- ↑ Livy xxvii. 5, “pace ac bello fidissimum annonae subsidium”; cf. xxxii. 27.
- ↑ Some fresh light has been thrown upon the later campaigns in Spain by the recently discovered fragment of an epitome of Livy (Oxyrhynchus Papyri, iv. 668; Kornemann, Die neue Liviusepitome aus Oxyrhynchos (1904).
- ↑ Italica (206), Appian, Iber. 38; Carteia (171), Livy xliii. 3.
